Microphones are typically composed of two main components: a Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) device that receives and converts sound energy into an electrical signal, and Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) (or other circuit) that takes the electrical signal from the MEMS device and performs post-processing on the signal and/or buffering the signal for the following circuit stages in a larger electronic environment.
The output of the ASIC can be in analog form or in digital form, and the microphones with ASIC providing digital output are generally referred to as digital microphones. In recent years, digital microphones have become increasingly popular in portable electronic equipment and, in particular, within mobile phones.
Compared to analog microphones, digital microphones offer additional functionalities and offer better control of microphone's operation. For example and in many electronic systems where digital microphones are used, multimode operation of the electronic system is desired. Multimode operation refers to operating modes where the electronic system can work with full performance with higher current consumption, lower performance with lower current consumption, and standby mode with no performance for very low power consumption. Such multimode operation requires that the microphone is capable of supporting such operational modes.
Unfortunately, previous approaches have not adequately addressed these concerns. This has led to some user dissatisfaction with these previous approaches.
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